KARMA IS A BITCH: IT’S NOT GOING TO END WELL FOR AARON RODGERS

Hoping for one last Super Bowl fling, the drama king of all NFL quarterbacks could be 3-9 before he knows it, prompting questions about how much longer he wants to play as his 39th birthday nears

     This is a lesson about karma. Either that or the reverse shamanic effects of ayahuasca. For years, Aaron Rodgers has acted like a pompous, my-dumps-don’t-stink, cooler-than-thou tool, a posture he backed up with successive MVP awards and some of the greatest quarterbacking play since the first official forward pass was tried in a football game.

     That came in 1906, when Saint Louis University’s Bradbury Robinson missed his intended receiver and, according to rules then, turned the ball over to Carroll College. In the throes of his shocking 2022 comeuppance, Rodgers has much in common with Robinson. He is having great difficulty connecting with receivers in Green Bay uniforms and has become a skittish turnover machine, heaving three Sunday inside the 25-yard line of a Detroit defense that was allowing the most points in the NFL this season.

     Unlike Robinson, who wasn’t judged back then by outraged rappers on social media, Rodgers also suffered the indignity of Lil Wayne wishing the Packers had traded him last spring. “RIP to the season … we should’ve gotten rid of 12 before the season,” he tweeted after a fifth straight loss, which Ayahuasca Aaron might think is a hallucination but actually is a whopping dose of what he had coming.

     Schadenfreude, they call it.

     Cosmic justice, too.

     It was Rodgers who purposely lied about his COVID vaccination status, misleading the public by declaring he’d been “immunized.” It was Rodgers who threatened to retire or demand a trade, only to break bread with his bosses when he signed a three-year, $150.8 million extension that makes him the league’s highest-paid player this season. To free up cap money, the Packers had to trade Rodgers’ beloved receiver, Davante Adams, which left him without a go-to target as he was cashing in greedily. Thus, when he has complained all year about a dearth of legitimate weapons, you rightfully can say Rodgers has only himself to blame.

     Which brings us to the first 3-6 start of his career as a Packers starter, a crater from which he won’t be escaping. He often looks disinterested, as if he’d rather be anywhere else but under center, and if he isn’t tanking in the most repugnant sense, he continued to lash out and mope on the sideline during the grotesque 15-9 loss. Nor was he pleased when the rival Bears somehow outbid his front office in a deal last week for receiver Chase Claypool, or when Kansas City won bidding for longball threat Kadarius Toney. Odell Beckham Jr. is still available. Why no activity? It has crossed some minds that Packers management, including general manager Brian Gutekunst, isn’t searching too hard for a reason. They want to make Rodgers miserable, chase him away and reboot the franchise.

     Is Rodgers just another few defeats from clocking out in surrender — knowing most of his completions these days are on checkoffs to running backs? One of the all-time vertical bombers realizes his grounded offense, beset by injuries and wavering morale, soon could be bounced from playoff contention in what he’d hoped was his first Super Bowl journey since he won his only championship a dozen seasons ago.

     Next month, Rodgers turns 39. He has said he doesn’t want to play too far into his 40s, like Tom Brady. Do the math. If this is the bitter, unfulfilled end, he won’t find many people feeling sorry for him, beyond media suckups Pat McAfee and Joe Rogan.

     “I’ve been counted out many times in my life as have many of my teammates, and I hope we just dig deep and find a way," Rodgers said. “We will truly be underdogs for many games moving forward. Hopefully, we can embrace that. We have two games at home. We've got to go win those two games, and then this thing looks a little different.”

     But those games are Sunday against Dallas, where his former head coach/personal ragdoll Mike McCarthy has the Cowboys in high-hopes mode, and four nights later against Tennessee. Then comes a potential horror show in Philadelphia against the Eagles, now 8-0. Imagine Rodgers stumbling out of Thanksgiving weekend as a 3-9 turkey, but this is what happens when he shrivels in the red zone, where he threw two interceptions for the first time in his career. Imagine his coach, Matt LaFleur, lamenting that the Lions WANTED Rodgers to throw the ball. They didn’t believe he could beat them with his arm. They were correct, all but laughing as he threw one pick off the helmet of a linebacker and another when he threw short to left tackle David Bakhtiari, who was eligible as a receiver. The ugly flip was picked by defensive end Aidan Hutchinson, who related what Rodgers said: “Aaron was talking some shit to me after saying he gave me a ‘freebie,’ and I was like, ‘Hey, freebie or not, I’ll take it.’ ’’

     A freebie? What does that mean? Is Rodgers so careless and reckless in his brooding mode that he now shrugs off killer turnovers? Bradbury Robinson never would have done that.

     As one of the league’s lowest-rated passers, Rodgers has no right to talk trash to anyone. What he should do is hand back a significant chunk of his salary. “Credit to Detroit, they dared us to throw the football," LaFleur said. “We've got to do something different, obviously, because we're not throwing and catching to the level that is conducive to winning football.”

     “I had some shitty throws, for sure,” said Rodgers, at least looking in the mirror for a change instead of pointing his usual blame pistol.

     Before long, if gossip hasn’t started already, speculation will percolate about his future. Will the Packers lean toward a reset — which would mean acclimating Jordan Love, the project whose surprising arrival in the 2020 draft triggered Rodgers’ resentment toward management? Will they solicit trade offers for A-Rod? But amid his decline, will a team take on a $100 million investment for a cranky, old quarterback turning 40 next season? Didn’t Denver screw up royally in relinquishing embarrassing riches to Seattle for Russell Wilson, whose $245 million contract looms as an all-time blunder? Won’t teams heed that warning in any Rodgers discussion?

     Think hard. Who would want to give up the house for him at this point? A Pittsburgh team committed to rebuilding around Kenny Pickett? Nope. The Washington Commanders? Not when Dan Snyder — hallelujah! — is looking to sell the franchise and put us out of our misery. Seattle? Geno Smith is playing 10 times better than Wilson at a rate 16 times less — Smith is on a one-year deal for $3.5 million, while Wilson grosses $57 million this season. New Orleans or Carolina? Maybe, but why would Rodgers settle for NFL mediocrity — and he will have influence in where he’d play next season at $60 million. The New York teams? They’re winning and don’t want to tempt a chemistry breach. It makes no sense to load up the cart for a QB who might be washed up when Lamar Jackson, 14 years younger than Rodgers and blessed with dual-threat gifts, is available in free agency.

     So karma will continue to devour the jerk. Type Dec. 4 into your iPhone reminders. That’s when Rodgers returns to Solider Field for the first time since last year, when he ran for a touchdown and shouted at sucker fans amid a one-sided yet heated rivalry: “All my f—ing life, I still own you!” Here is Chicago’s rare chance for payback, now that Justin Fields finally is being utilized properly and — dare I say — looks like the two-way playmaker the Bears have lacked … forever. Might it be the last time Rodgers plays there as a Packer? How many more outbursts can he have on a sideline before quitting and fleeing to his Peruvian rainforest?

     This is a league centered around a new quarterbacking elite — Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, Jackson, Joe Burrow, Jalen Hurts, Justin Herbert. Watching Fields duel Tua Tagovailoa, you wondered if they’re Next Gen candidates. At least Brady, otherwise dazed in divorce hell, engineered his 55th game-winning drive — passing Peyton Manning for the most since the 1970 merger — on a day when he became the first QB to reach 100,000 career passing yards.

     “That was awesome. That was f—ing awesome,” Brady said at the podium after Tampa Bay’s 16-13 victory over the crashing Rams.

     Rodgers? He fielded questions about whether he regrets not retiring.

     “I think that's an exaggeration. Frustration and miserability are two different emotions,” he said. “So, when I decided to come back, it was all-in, and I don't make decisions and then — hindsight 20/20 — have regrets about big decisions like that. So, I was all-in, and this is a lot of life lessons, for sure, this year, but luckily it's not over.”

     Oh, it’s over. “If you come out and you leave points on the field and the opportunity is squandered, what else can you say about that? This league is unforgiving,” Packers tight end Marcedes Lewis said. “It will humble you quick, and the margin for error is small.”

     “I’m sure he’s extremely frustrated,” LaFleur said of his hippie-dippy QB.

     Somewhere, a mad crank with a No. 12 voodoo doll is having a jolly old time. Seems a notable football sunset is not going to end well.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.